We could talk about my very favorite ceramics makers…but their nation is still prominent in the world (indeed they are the world’s most populous nation), so we will talk about Chinese porcelain some other day. For now, let’s instead concentrate on my second favorite ceramics artists—the astonishing and mysterious Moche people of Peru. Ferrebeekeeper has tried to explain the nature of Moche culture (as archaeologists currently understand it to have been) and we have also tried to put up some galleries of their exquisite waterfowl and their amazing bats (which I think are the best bat artworks extant).

For tonight though I am going to present a gallery of Moche ceramic vessels in the shape of animals without any comment. This is partly because I want you to experience the exquisite form of the ancient clay without any distractions and…it is partly because I got started working on Christmas projects and didn’t get around to writing this post until the middle of the night. I think you will agree as you look at this collection of vessels, that the Moche were astonishing at conveying animals in a way which was streamlined and simple yet also brings out the beauty and the personality of the creatures. These are not Walt Disney-esque cartoon animals of unnatural sweetness and broad comedy…and yet they are also animals which have distinctive emotional resonance and convey the distinctive character, intelligence, and temperament of these South American animals. It is a hard balance to get right, and yet I feel that the unknown potters and sculptors of long ago have done a superb job at bringing out what was real and what was magical in these creatures. I am not explaining this the way I wish, but just try sculpting some animals and you will soon see what I mean.

Disturbing news from the world of workplace safety. Gillian Genser, a 59-year-old Canadian sculptor, has been suffering from worsening pain, splitting headaches, and nausea for nearly a decade and a half. She visited a range of specialized neurologists and endocrinologists, but none of them could pinpoint the nature of her malady which grew worse to the point that she was immobilized and suffered complete loss of hearing in one ear. She was unable to distinguish up from down, forgot the names and faces of people, she knew her whole life, and discovered herself wandering the streets for no reason shouting profanities. The doctors suspected heavy-metal poisoning, but Genser vehemently insisted that her materials were all natural.

If you are an artist yourself, you are probably shouting—but this is clearly heavy metal poisoning! And you are right: Genser finally was diagnosed with acute arsenic and lead poisoning after one of her physicians insisted on a blood test. Yet Genser was not a painter (like me, sigh) nor did she cast in metals or use exotic glazes and stains. Her only materials were silver and mussel shells which she polished agonizingly by hand.

She obtained the blue mussels from a market in Toronto’s Chinatown and ate the mollusks with friends. She then used the shells for her larger than life anatomical sculpture of Adam, the mythical first human from the Abrahamic faiths. Sadly, whoever was providing the shellfish was obtaining them from water which was heavily polluted. Mussels store metals in their shells, and Genser’s polishing, sanding, and shaping freed the trapped pollutants into dust which she inhaled (although eating 3 meals a week of mussel flesh probably didn’t help either). The story is even more troubling when one reflects that blue mussels are an Atlantic shellfish and Toronto is at least 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the waves.

Hey! Has anyone noticed that Toronto is apparently right next to New York State? Where were these mussels from anyway?

The moral here in not “don’t be an artist” or “don’t eat mussels” (although, come to think of it, those are extremely plausible lessons). Instead everyone needs to be careful in the modern world to watch out for hazardous materials which proliferate in unexpected ways from novel sources. Of course, this is hardly a soothing message since most of us are not chemists (much less endocrinologists) and it looks like even those experts can’t always see where problems are coming from. Maybe the real lesson is that humankind’s vast numbers and sophisticated industrial society are fundamentally inimical to the web of life which sustains us. Actually, that is an even less comfortable message…but, well, I am not a politician here to sooth you with lies. We have learned how to protect ourselves from the natural world. Now we are going to have to learn (quickly) how to protect the natural world from ourselves.

Anyway, let’s take a look at the sculpture that caused such suffering for Genser (see the photos above from the artist). It looks like the metal-poisoning started to fundamentally work its way into the sculpture itself—in terms of conception, execution, AND material (obviously). Yet there is something oddly appropriate about the subject matter (Adam’s choices, after all, are a metaphor for humankind’s great metamorphosis from hunter-gathering beings to civilization-building farmers and crafters). The dark armless statue with the alien face and the black glistening muscles and nacreous organs, seems to be a sort of manifestation of heavy metal poisoning. The whole 15 year project has inadvertently become a performance piece about the pain of the world (just think of those poor mussels which can’t even move to escape their poisoned home waters). I hope that the short-lived media burst helps Genser’s career, but I also hope she switches media as soon as possible. While we are making wishes, let’s express some really heartfelt aspirations to be better stewards of the oceans. They are the cradle of life…yet they are being sadly abused.

Lately I have been extremely fascinated by seeds. Not only do I garden (remember when this blog started out sort of as a garden/musing blog?) but I am increasingly fascinated by the seed as a symbol of enormous unknown potential of the future. This is a controversial and contentious way to look at things. Lately the anxiety-fueled news seems almost utterly pessimistic about the future (unless it is a glorified ad for an i-phone or a watch that tells your heart beat or some such tech garbage ). I can certainly understand why thoughtful forecasters are downbeat: the California wildfire (and all other ecological news) is a wake-up call about climate change and the detrimental effect of our exponential growth species/lifestyle on the planetary ecosystem.

Yet without hope and an objective (above and beyond selling more plastic junk and dodgy financial services to each other) what do we have? Looking at my proposed long-term mission statement for humankind, I notice the word “seed” is the prominent object (and perhaps the most ambiguous & figurative word in an objective filled with ambiguity and uncertainty. Oh! I should provide that mission statement:

to bear the seed of Earth Life beyond this planet and upwards into the heavens

That’s, um, a big goal. We’ll circle back to it in future posts (long-term and short term). For now though, I want to show you a few actual pictures of seeds so that you start thinking about the future too…and because they are possibly even more beautiful than flowers. Two of these images (the ones at the top and the bottom) are from the remarkable Rob Kesseler (robkesseler.co.uk) a master of microscope photography (I just ordered his book on Amazon, so hopefully he won’t care that I took two of his meticulously photographed and hand-colored images for this post. The seed at the top is a Delphinium pergrinum (a member of the Larkspar family). The iridescent seed in the middle of this post is a Portulaca (moss rose) seed as photographed by Yanping Wang from the Beijing Planetarium in Beijing, China. The scary spiky seed at the very bottom is a Daucus carrota (wild carrot). Seeds have not just been on my mind. They are invading my art as well–so watch for them on a flounder near you! We’ll talk more about this in the depths of winter when sleeping seeds will be on everyone’s minds.

I was sent out of the office to deliver some financial papers in midtown the other day, and, as I came back, I spotted this amazing autumn garden featuring a magnificent Yayoi Kusama statue of a pumpkin covered with polka dots. It really spoke to me in the gloomy gray day and it made me realize that we need to write about Kusama, who has been a mainstay of Japanese art since the sixties, (although she has a biography and artist-creation story which stretches back to before World War II). Kusama took up residence in the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill in the mid 70’s and she has lived there ever since, even though she is a wealthy international art celebrity. She makes no secrets of her emotional troubles–but she has surmounted them through polka dots and gourds. Kusama is often quoted as saying: “If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago.”

The unexpected appearance of her work out in the real world brightened up my November outlook and I hope it will cheer you up too (here is a link to actual details written in the insufferable language of real-estate developers). Additionally this particular manifestation is seasonally appropriate and needs to be put up before autumn fades away and winter begins. However don’t be anxious, we will be sure to return to Yayoi Kusama’s work and talk about colors and polka dots when winter’s monotony is too much to bear.

There was a long line at the Brooklyn polls tonight and plenty of time to color in this little (barely) allegorical flounder which I drew in my little sketchbook I carry with me. Afterwards I stuck my voting sticker next to the cartoon. Let’s see what the returns reveal as they roll in… Ferrebeekeeper will be back tomorrow with more mollusks, cities, gothic artworks, farm fowl, and so forth.

As a Halloween treat, here is a pen and ink drawing which I made of a great dark fantasy metropolis (which is also a lurking predatory fish). As you can see, there are three stages to the composition: the cerebral top portion inhabited by angels, gods, and flying marvels; the primal underworld at the bottom (which is filled with wailing souls, dark sacrifice, and insatiable hunger); and, in the middle, a glistening city between the two extremes. In the sky, Apollo, god of prophecy and the arts, rides his chariot angrily towards a blithe Icarus. At far right, Death watches the city while, beneath the towers (beyond life?) the inhabitants…or possibly their souls walk through a Tartarus of appetites and chthonic marvels. I am sorry that it is too small to appreciate (it took me forever to draw all of the little ghost figures and monsters which are under the fish). The piece speaks to the larger nature of humankind’s collective existence (and our appetites) but I feel the supernatural monsters and crystal landscape with the heavens also speaks to larger possibilities we could aspire to. I am sorry it is slightly crooked in this shot: this was the best picture I have but it is slightly distorted (until I can get a finer scan made).

I am back from the bosky hills and verdant dells of West Virginia and SE Ohio and I have a lot of new ideas and stories to share. Thanks Mom and Dad for the lovely visit and all of your kindness. Also, I want to thank Dan Claymore who did a superb job in my absence. Dan understood the purpose of Ferrebeekeeper and matched the tone beautifully (although that Japanese fishmarket made me anxious for the oceans and our flatfish friends). Because of his excellent work, I realize I should take more vacations. Dan also confided in me that he found the project intimidating because of the perspicacity of the polymath readers…so, as always, thank YOU!

When I travel, I carry a little book and a tin of pens and colored pencils (my tin is shaped like a sarcophagus and is interesting in its own right, but more about that later). I like to quickly draw little colored sketches of what pops into my head or what is in front of me. Sometimes there are realistic. Sometimes they are utterly fanciful. They are sometimes silly and occasionally sad. I have dozens of volumes of New York drawings, but I figured I should share all the little sketches I made on my trip (unfortunately nobody posed for me–so there are no portraits). Keep in mind that these are sketches–so they are quick and imperfect. For example, I drew the one at the top in the car as my family and I went to a wedding in the central mountains of West Virginia, and half way through I realized I didn’t have a dark gray pencil. Roads are hard for me too (as are straight lines in the moving car). Maybe this says something about the unnatural yet astonishing nature of our highway infrastructure.

In the car, I also drew this humorous drawing of a gnome kingdom. My mother was describing a nuclear weapons facility somewhere which she visited during her Pentagon career, and I apparently misheard the name. This delightful misunderstanding engendered a whole didactic gnome world. Fribble Fribble!

This drawing is the corner of the yard at home with autumn cornfields beyond. Vinnie the barncat is sneaking onto the right corner, catty-corner from the old Amish farmstead. I wish I could have captured Vinnie better, but Rory the obstreperous adolescent poodle chased him off, before I could catch a better likeness.

No Ferrebeekeeper sketch collection would be complete without a magical flounder. This one apparently has a direct connection to the underworld. More about that in later posts.

Speaking of the underworld, here is a little drawing of the world beneath the topsoil. There is a lungfish, a brumating turtle, a mole, a mummy, and an ant colony, but beneath these ordinary items is a whole gnome kingdom. Don’t worry! I don’t believe in gnomes. Their tireless tiny civilization really represents bacteria to me…oh and humans civilization too (artistic allegory is more of an art than a science). This macro/micro dichotomy is captured by the shoes of a full sized (albeit anachronistic) human at the top left.

This is a quick impression of a sunset which was SO beautiful. If only I could truly have captured more of its sublime luminescent color….

This is my parents’ pond, which I love more than I can tell you. Unfortunately a big drip came out of my dip pen and made the ducks look monstrous. There is a hint of autumn orange in the trees. This is another one that frustrates me, because reality was so pretty.

I watched the second half of a documentary about the circus on PBS. It seems like the circus was more important and central to our nation than I knew (although I should have guessed based on current politics). I represented the performers as abstract shapes, but the overall composition bears a debt to Cimabue and his Byzantine predecessors.

Finally here is a picture from the tarmac of John Glenn airport in Columbus. Naturally the plane moved away as soon as things began to get good. By the way I really enjoyed my flight and I am always surprised that people are so angry about flying. For the price of a moderately fancy dinner, we can rocket across the continent above the clouds at hundred miles an hour. We travel like the gods of Greek mythology except people serve us coffee and ginger cookies and, best of all we can truly see the earth from a towering perspective–which is the subject of my last picture which I scrawled as we looped back across Long island west to LaGuardia (I’m glad I am not an air traffic controller). Sadly this picture did not capture the beauty and complexity of Long Island Sound, and Queens (nor even the lovely billowing cumulus clouds) but at least it made me stare raptly out the window at the ineffable but disturbing beauty of the strange concrete ecosystem we are building.

Let me know what you think of my little sketches and, now that summer vacation is out of the way, get ready for some October horror and Halloween fun! Oh! Also get ready for Dan Claymore’s book about a human gumshoe in the dark robot future. It will be out before you know it, and it is going to be amazing!

Hello, fellow fans of Ferrebeekeeper. My name is Daniel Claymore and I’ll be your guest blog-post-thing person while Ferrebeekeeper Prime is away taking a much needed vacation. As you might imagine, this is a great honor. As you might also imagine, it is quite daunting, too. With that in mind, I’d like to begin simply.

One of the themes of the week that Beekeeper Prime and I discussed was the vanishing relationship between art and science. Or rather, the perceived kinship between art and science, or lack thereof. That got me thinking about highly technical art forms, which lead me to thinking about movies. And when I think about movies, I usually wind up thinking about Akira Kurosawa.

His film career is among the most famous and celebrated in human history, so I won’t describe it here. What is less well-known, however, is that Akira Kurosawa was also a wonderful fine artist. I’d like to share with you some of his impressive work.

A piece from RAN.

Trained as a young man in illustration and calligraphy, Kurosawa had every intention of becoming a painter. Indeed, he succeeded as a working painter for several years before finally burning out from the relentless grind of uncertainty and impoverishment. It was only by sheer chance (or inescapable destiny) that he found his way into the nascent Japanese film industry, working his way up from assistant director, to writer, to editor, to director, and finally to world class master. But he always retained a painter’s eye. And a painter’s brushes, canvases, papers, pens and whatever else he needed, because the guy sure produced a lot of work…

Another conceptual design from RAN. He was in his 70s when he did this. And when he actually made the film…one can only hope for genes as good.

This one makes me dizzy. Not for a film, or never REALLY for a film. Just his state of mind at the time.

There are many more examples you can find online, as well as some excellent books, and I encourage you to explore the subject. Akira Kurosawa had a fascinating and dramatic life, with all the quite tragedy and stunning beauty one finds in his films. As the week progresses there will be trips to stranger places and weirder things, but for now please enjoy these vibrant, moving artworks from a true 20th century polymath.

Please forgive any technical issues. BeeKeeper Prime often mentions his frustration with WordPress and boy, oh boy, he ain’t kidding.

It is the first day of October, which means you need to start getting ready for Halloween horror coming to Ferrebeekeeper at the end of the month! Every year we have done a special theme week to highlight the monsters lurking in the many shadows of existence. As all of you know, there is darkness out there: it lurks just beneath our appetites, our skin, our mortal lives…Ye! there is a ghastly void beneath the pretty autumn flowers themselves! As a teaser of things to come later this month, I am doubling back to an earlier post which had one of my drawings in it.

The drawing was hard to see in that post (because WordPress seemingly no longer blows images up to true size if you click on them) however it took me an enormous amount of time and it looks very ghastly and disconcerting in the real world. It is another one of my allegorical flounder drawings, but this one concerns the hunger, carnage, and obliteration which, alas, seem to be ineluctable features of all systems involving living things…perhaps of all systems, full stop.

There is a story I imagined while drawing this: what if you were wandering through the barrowlands of Europe when you found an ancient flatfish made of hammered gold? You would grab the treasure and begin to carry it off, however closer examination might give you pause, for, graven into the solid gold, are vile butchers, sorcerers, monsters, and dark gods. Assembled on the surface of the piece are a monster andrewsarchus, an underworld goddess leaping out of a well with entrails in her hand, cannibals, and a parasitic tapeworm thing. All of these frightful entities are gathered around an evil sentient tree with hanged men it its boughs, and the entire tableau is on the back of a terrible moaning flatfish which seems almost to writhe in your hand. When you look up at the sky the night is descending on the wold. The megaliths take on a sinister new aspect and the very stars seem inimical. it is all too easy to imagine the black holes eating away the center of each galaxy. With dawning fear you realize you need to put this unearthly artifact right back where you found it.

Like a lot of people, I have a dayjob which does not necessarily play to my greatest strengths. That is good on normal days: when I get out of the office I am ready to write about Goths in space or technicolor trees and then sculpt representations of meaningful tricolor flatfish. It is less good on days when the sink is hopelessly clogged at home and there are administrative chores related to technical or monetary aspects of life which must be addressed. Then the whole day becomes pointless dirty drudgery with no respite. All of which is to say, i ran out of time to write about science and art, so I am going to show some flounder drawings which i made on the train. Above is a very colorful flounder with a dinosaur, a hotdog, a walking alien machine, and a strange angel. I would have loved it so much as a child. As an adult though, I like the elongated walrus best.

The second small flounder is a more traditional flounder living in the ocean with a dancing prawn and a pale squid (the little mollusk must be frightened). Although this drawing lacks some of the more fantastical and surreal elements which stand out in other works from this series, its high contrast white on black linework does make it pop out. We’ll return to regular programming tomorrow. Wish me luck fixing my sink!